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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Rhinebeck Wool Festival and other things

Ok, seriously, how adorable are these alpaca?! A couple of weekends ago, I persuaded Aaron to go with me to Rhinebeck, NY to their wool festival. Now, I had heard wonderful things about this festival, but nothing could've prepared me for how awesome it was! The drive was about an hour and a half, and we lucked out with some gorgeous weather and beautiful fall colors. After leaving the highway, we would through farmland dotted with barns of all colors and sizes, and animals of all kinds. The traffic closer to the fairgrounds looked pretty backed up, but we got through and parked pretty quickly. The sheer number of people just amazed us! The first building we went into had all kinds of food and wine booths all from local farms and vineyards. The second building was packed with wool vendors of all types! I lucked out and found Barb and Sarah of Hallowed Hill Primitives after the second or third booth. Those two are so talented, and everytime I see their work, I get so motivated to get home and start hooking! lol After that, all the buildings started to blur together. There were about five or six rug hookers there with booths, all showing amazing work. Of course, there was scads of hand-spun and hand-dyed wool hanging everywhere. I was officially overwhelmed, and only managed to buy some sheep roving in a yummy color called Heritage Tomato, and some alpaca roving in a beautiful soft brown. I also bought a couple of books on using natural dyes and spinning with a hand-spindle. Aaron and I stopped to eat lunch and watch the sheep herding dogs do their work, which always amazes me. It was a wonderful day, and I'm already making plans to attend next year! My knitting teacher and good friend has already said she wants to go also, so I'm thinking a great field trip will be in order!

My hooking class meets for the last time tonight, and all the ladies have really picked up rug hooking pretty quickly! I'm bringing my camera tonight to get some pictures, and will post them (with permission, of course) tomorrow. It really is a great group of ladies, and I'm hoping that they will want to continue hooking. I'm going to collect e-mail addresses, and will start having a hook-in at my house at least once a month. I think it's a great way to get to know people, have time to visit, eat a bit, and really enjoy great conversation. Besides, I like hanging with cool people! lol

Well, it's off to the dye pots to see what kind of trouble I can get into before class tonight!!